I read over internet “containers wrap up a piece of software in a complete filesystem that contains everything it needs to run: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries – anything you can install on a server“.

2 Solutions collect form web for “Containers – What are their benefits, if they can't run across platform”

Posting the comment as answer::

If containers only contain app code + runtimes + tools + libraries.
They can be shipped together. What conatiners are getting here?

Suppose there is an enterprise with thousands of employees and all of them work on Visual Studio C++. Now, the administrator can create a container with the installed (only C++ components) and configured VS, and deploy that container to all employees. The employees can instantly start working without bothering about installation and configuration of the application. Again, if the employee somehow corrupts the application, they only need to download the container again and they are good to go.

Sandboxing

Security

Maintenance

Mobility

Backup

Many more to go.

Are container platform independent?

IMHO, I don’t think so, as they rely on the system calls. Though, I am open to other concepts if anybody knows better on this topic.

Even only considering one platform, containers have their advantages; just not perhaps the ones you need right now. 🙂 Containers help in administration/maintenance of complex IT systems. With containers you can easily isolate applications, their configuration, and their users, to achieve:

Better security (if someone breaks in, damage is usually limited to one container)

Better safety (if something breaks, or e.g. you make an error, only applications in a given container will be victim to this)

Easier management (containers can be started/stopped separately, can be transferred to another hosts (granted: host with the same OS; in case of Linux containers the host must also be Linux))